#handbitten

[lighthouseborna]

👫 for domi 🥺👉🏻👈🏻

(Send 👫 & I’ll write four hcs for our muse’s dynamic) || Accepting!

1. Domi is his day/night dynamic, the opposites attract. Meek in the places, he is confident, sharp on the edges where he is blunt, cool and distant just as he is warm and dead center. The differences between them are many, and at times so diametric even they sometimes question what brings them together at all.  The answer, of course, is dawn, and dusk. There is, however, different they are, a sliding scale, a gradient that goes from day to night and night to day. Good days, they make a game of finding the dawn (is it a specific hour? first light? the gap between that and the proper rise of the sun?) and point, together, at the different-each-day sunsets of dusk. On bad days, the places they back up to each other are the frontlines of battlegrounds, where they wonder why the other is so the way they are, and fight over if things belong in light or darkness, and criticize each others’ method of being. At all times, it stays true that opposites are compliments. It cannot always be day, and it cannot always be night. Divine balance, or what have you. Domi’s more private way of living her life helps Henry pull back from things to find balance when he cannot do that on his own. Her here-is-how-I-survive that she has taught herself, those iron boundaries of what she will and won’t tolerate from people around her (her “harshness”) are valuable, and honest, and exemplify a self-focus that Henry, often, lacks. Simultaneously, Henry’s constant engagement helps bring Domi into things, without which she would just... pull away and pull away and pull away until she was gone completely. His giving and dependence on others show her that it’s not only true that people need each other but that it’s ok, and it’s alright, and it’s safe to love and be loved. ( “Your life would be easier without me” / “But not better.” is. so very them for it being something I didn’t write. His life would be easier without her, simpler, and he’ll even admit that because that’s not the point. It’s not about easy. )

2. One of his absolute favorite things to do is listen to (/feel) her heartbeat. This is another one of those things that’s like, broadly true of him, but with extra emphasis inside of this dynamic. Part of it is because like... he knows he often has an effect on it, both in sense of making her heart beat faster but also when they’re gentle and still and it settles. And his settles to match hers.  The rest isn’t really for any particular reason that he’s got a label or an explanation for, just a thing that’s true. Mostly this means a lot of him laying with his head against her chest or sometimes her back, but also he’ll find it at her wrist or neck, too, feeling out the beat of her heart. Committing the rhythm to memory only to forget it on purpose so he can, again, seek it out. Lots of kisses to pulse points, thanks for being here, which actually-

3. Touch as talk. I think we might have talked about this so you might already know it lives in my head but: I think they do a lot of touching-as-talking. And he’s really not usually one for like, codes as communication? He generally prefers forward speak and direct ways of addressing things, calling them out, naming them. It just happens, though, that from their earliest meeting there were, already, a lot of things they didn’t have to say to each other. A lot of things that they already knew, and both have trouble putting to words for different (yet similar) reasons. There was a lot of silent understanding that came first, and then that led into getting to know each other. Secrets and souls and fears, first, then what color is the others’ favorite, and where they like go to spend time, and what jokes make the other laugh. So– for that as their ground zero, for them, there is a lot of touching-as-talking. A light tap to the elbow instead of hello. Side pressed against side in place of I’m with you, arm brushing by arm as shorthand I’m here if you need me but I’m giving you space. Grabbing his shirt with only the ends of her fingers to say stay here, please. Cupping her face for I love you. Pulling her hand to his face for I know you love me, too.

4. It’s about trying. The conscious decision to try. The choice, again and again and again, of picking love. Acceptance, forgiveness, growth. They’re picking this. If it were easy... I won’t say that would be bad, because that’s not fair and different ways of loving exist, but if it were easy... I’m not sure they’d pick it. They’re both kind of like that– I don’t pick easy I pick better. I pick difficult, and I pick vulnerable, and I pick you.

[lighthouseborna]

" are you hurt?! hey! are you hurt?! " from domi 😌

(Just Checking) @handbitten || Accepting!

        It’s not exactly the gentlest of resurfacings. Not really like waking up, though it must be similar one way or another. A dream that wasn’t a dream. Locked inside something that had already happened, exactly as it had happened. Even in the midst of the confusion of crawling out, back to the waking, walking world, he wonders which is to blame; the magic? or the very thing he’d been hoping to find with it? It take several more attempts for her question to register as anything more than noise to him. His head... There’s the start of a shake he abandons. The beginning of a nod that he can’t complete. It all turns into a strange, nearly circular movement staggered by pulls of thoughts and pools of- hm. Searching. He-

        “I- Am I?” He isn't sure. There's a thought in mind that he must be, the memory of pain renewed and snarling. But, too, there is the.. what? Something less forward, buried in the onslaught of sensation. An idea of tenderness. A whisper of comfort. He takes her hand and pulls, guiding it to the side of his face, to the edge of his jaw. It matches none of the memory... but the idea. The whisper. ( I’ve got you. That’s what it had been- I’ve got you. Through the dark and hurt. You’re ok, I’ve got you. ) A smile appeared. It’s a weary little thing, exhausted, even, but a smile nonetheless. “I’m.. okay,” he decides, leaning into her palm, “I- I think.” Hardly a laughing matter, that’s nevertheless what’s pushed up into his voice. A soft laugh. Not even a sound, just a shiver of it, a rush of air. “I’m okay.”

[lighthouseborna]

❛ i’m not jealous. ❜ from domi ;)))

(Saying Things Softly) || Accepting (Selectively)

        “No? That’s a shame.” Flippant. Playing into and off of her aloof sniff and crossed arms with a levity that twitches his lips, draws lines in his cheeks and at the edges of his eyes. She doesn’t answer, but then that’s what he expects. She never does, unless it’s to call him foul names with a fond affect. But then the silence stretches, and her arms remain crossed. She doesn’t meet his eye when he goes looking.

        “..Dominica.” His grin flickers– dissolves. A sincere question bleeds through when he says, gentler, “Domi.” You don’t really think-? Clearly, she does. Or did. ..Or does. “Come here- no, come here. Come here.” Insistent only in the sense of a beggar; if she turned her back he’d remain where he was, hand extended, asking. Asking her to draw near so he can put his hands on either side of her waist. So he can put his hands on either side of her waist and pull her closer, and squeeze gently, thumbs pressing. So she can see the gold and honesty in his eyes. “There’s nothing to be jealous of.”

[lighthouseborna]

@handbitten​ (Dominica) || x

        “...I remember you.” A dawning realization as grave as the terrible dawn his memory has placed her in, one of many ghostly faces circled ‘round the weather deck. One of many faces he’s not accustomed to seeing outside of his... sleep. It leads him to lean back. Test the tips of his fingers. “..I-” Hm. “... How did you..?” Get here?

[faetaels]

@handbitten

[lighthouseborna]

nightmare for domi :)))

(Plague His Sleep) @handbitten || Accepting (Selectively)

        He thinks he’s been here before. It’s hard to tell, because on the surface it does not look like anywhere in particular at all. Indistinct. There and not. Somewhere and nowhere. Familiar...familiar but why? His turning, searching for landmarks, searching for north, lands him looking across an empty courtyard at an archway. Beyond it.. nothing. No, something, there, far back in the shadows... He steps toward it. It moves toward him. Moves toward him gathering speed. The archway expanded and, as it passed over him, rips right through chest with such succinct, savage efficiency he only manages a startled grunt. What? The world moved forward with the doorway- moved by without him. Well beyond his outstretched hand. It left him standing on nothing, clutching at the invisible tear in his lungs, gasping for breath. Confused. 

        He stumbles after the world that passed him over. The hole he fell through is framed like a mirror, now, corners rounded and floating. The closer he gets, the more it dawns on him something is moving on the other side. He is moving on the other side. Reflections drawing to each other.

        Drops of water.

        The last steps echo back to him, sound from the other side. He reaches for the reflection, blunting his fingers against the glassy barrier that has cut off his way home. He presses his palm against it. On the other side, the thing that had been pulled from his chest stares back. It is like him in every way but one: it has not reached. Has not touched the thing that parts them. It stares back, eyes shadowed. They should be yellow — why he thinks this, he does not know, but he thinks they should be yellow. But they are only plain brown. Plain brown, but... darker. As he watches, darkening. To pitch, black and bubbling. Oh.

        Drop of water, drop of ink.

        Why? What’s drawn it out of him? He searches it for an answer, but can’t see beyond the glower, the shadows. It has no answer either, at least not one its willing to speak to him. It only moves -twitches- when movement happens over its shoulder. Someone- someone familiar approaching from some out-of-frame place to call on him. To call on him, but he’s on the wrong side. Oh god. His chest twinges, and he curls his fingers into the skin. When he looks down, he finds the same bubbling black of its eyes pushing up between his fingers. Bubbling up like a spring. He looks up, back down in the well of pitch.

        ‘Don’t.’ He begs.

        It scowls back at him. It has never cared for the way he makes appeals. The way he warns. The way he reaches, first. It turns and leaves him there. Ignoring the way he shouts. Ignoring the way he tries to draw it back in.

        ‘Don’t. It’s not her fault it’s ours- it’s ours. It’s ours. Come back. I’ll fix it. Don’t do this.’

        ‘Henry?’ Distant. Muffled but- god. She’s as confused as she has every right to be. And all he can do is keep calling out. Trying to warn her. Trying to drown it out. Drown out its speaking. Speaking the most vile of mistruths – accusations – assumptions – lies. All in his voice. All thoughts he’s had before and shut away. Shoved back into the dark from whence they’d come. But that is the dark. That is the dark and it’s raging right at her, an onslaught that cares nothing for the way her fists curl, the way she folds her shoulders in, shrinking from him.

        ‘Stop'

        He shouts; she can’t hear and his anger has gone deaf, nearly blind. Too focused for anything else, blackening all else. 

       ‘Stop, please.’

        He rails against cold surface of the distance between them, punching and slamming his shoulders into it until the pain sinks in. Until his arms go numb. Until he can feel it again, bone deep and desperate. Spattered black.

        “Stop — please stop.”

        It cracks with each strike. Spiderwebs of damage shooting across the surface, the sound like fissuring ice which echoes back in gunshots, but each and every one seals over again before the next strike. He cannot destroy it faster than it rebuilds itself. He cannot find a crack to pry at before they smooth over, as if he’d never begun to break it down at all.

        “Henry.” Close. Close and real. Real, and so he knows, then, he has been dreaming.

        Recognized, named for what it is, the nightmare collapses. Not a whisper of wind in its sails anymore. There is a bed -a bunk –his bunk (officer quarters on the Tempest; remembered reality filing in one piece at a time) under his side. The ship buoys gently. The fear of the thing becomes flat, listless, though he can still picture it. Dominica pulls: her arm already around him, she draws herself flush against his back. Her fingertips are hooked into his shirt collar; her palm seated over his heart. She can feel it, then. Beating against a barrier. His belated response -mm?- is not quite words. 

        “...You fell asleep,” she says into the back of his shoulder. She says it with an edge of criticism, you fell asleep, like that is the thing she holds issue with.

        He snorts quietly. It is a statement of fact filling in for a difficult question; you fell asleep instead of what was the nightmare about? In her own way, she’s asking. What’s wrong? (Why are you so tense lately? ((Stop what?)) ) He knows she’s asking. It’s enough to make him smile to himself, but before she can ask again he turns. Dominica makes a soft sound of surprise –he decides to call it a squeak, and that’s what word he’ll use when he teases her for it later– as he loops his arms around her, pressing his face into the crook of her neck and shoulder. There is a moment of hesitance, while they find a new way to lay after he’s disrupted just absolutely everything. When he’s pulled her near enough they have to take turns breathing and she’s threaded her legs through his and his palms are pressed to her sides under her shirt, her hands slide into his hair. The light scratch of her nails makes chills rush down his arms. He hums against her throat and she laughs into the top of his head.

        Her pulse is too-fast, too. He can feel it — imagines her heart jumping against walls the way his had tried throwing itself into her palm. (If his heart is stitched upon his sleeve, hers lives in the hollow of her throat, fighting to be seen and yet, still, choking back the signs of life.) It always seems to surprise her, the way he reaches. No matter how many times he does. He’s half in love with it, if only for this. 

        For tying each to the other, sleeve to throat, and, on the line what binds them, an anchor: sinking, slowly, synchronously, into steady, settled rhythm.

[faetaels]

@handbitten

[janefaery]

Baked   goods   in   a   plastic   container   or   not,   Jane   knew   better   than   to   board   a   pirate   ship   without   permission,   especially   since   she   hadn’t   been   invited.   While   she   didn’t   immediately   see   anyone   on   board,   there   had   to   be   someone   watching,   hopefully   someone   willing   to   accept   her   delivery   and   see   it   delivered   to   the   right   person   without   it   mysteriously   disappearing.               

Really,   maybe   the   entire   thing   was   stupid.   They   were   only   barely   back   and   there   had   been   a   lot   of   catching   up   for   the   crew   to   do   and   people   were   busy   with   their   own   things   and   in   the   grand   scheme   of   injured   parents   and   destroyed   businesses,   what   did   funfetti   cupcakes   really   matter?   

They   likely   didn’t,   but   Jane   had   promised,   so.   “Excuse   me,   but   may   I   come   aboard,   please?”   Jane   shouted   to   whomever   might   be   on   watch,   trusting   that   someone   would   hear   her   (and   likely   noticed   her   before   she   stopped   at   the   gangplank).   “Or   could   you   come   get   something?   I   have   a   delivery   for   Sammy.”   //   starter   for   @handbitten​